| > if you only had an idea of what the Facebook data faucet looked like in 2007-2017, your hairs would stand. I'm pretty sure everyone of technical aptitude knew Facebook's data faucet. But maybe I missed something. As far as I know, Facebook: a) Had all the freely provided data, PII/likes/social graph/etc. b) On Facebook's site or mobile app, the were fingerprinting your device, examining your scrolling/mouse/clicking/other inputs to determine attention on a page c) Could recreate most nonuser's social graphs just by seeing them as endpoints in registered people's contacts
c) On the web, had "like" buttons or ads and their code pretty much everywhere. Therefore they could track most people to most sites. d.1) Sites could directly provide more information to allow retargeting
d.2) Sites could directly provide more information through a host of other services FB offered to the developers e) On mobile, in the background, scrapped your contacts, GPS, nearby devices (other phones, WiFi, Bluetooth, although tower information may or not be included). Also, had installed by default on a lot of phones f) On mobile, provided libraries people could import into their apps, mostly but not exclusively for ads. This let them get similar insights into usage patterns as on the web. Also, if people didn't install the FB app, let them get (e) g) Used your real identity to purchase information about you from the various realworld data merchants Which did I miss? |
I don't think you missed anything substantial... but I'll add two extensions:
(1) Social graphs change slowly. And they still own Instagram, so for many users they have a live social graph still.
(2) Facebook Pixel is dead. Long live Facebook Pixel!
The Facebook Pixel is now (or at least nearing) effectively dead on modern up-to-date devices running ad blockers. Of course that leaves plenty of desktop machines where people aren't running ad blockers.
But more importantly, Facebook has acknowledged the elephant in the room and moved from client side to server side with Conversions API (CAPI) (aka the new "Facebook Pixel"). And there's nothing ad blockers can do about server-side analytics...